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The Enigmatic Number e: A History in Verse and Its Uses in the Mathematics Classroom - The Annotated Poem

Author(s):

Sarah Glaz (University of Connecticut)

The Enigmatic Number e

by Sarah Glaz

It ambushed Napier at Gartness, like a swashbuckling pirate leaping from the base. He felt its power, but never realized its nature.e's first appearance in disguise—a tabular array of values of ln, was logged in an appendix to Napier's posthumous publication.Oughtred, inventor of the circular slide rule, still ignorant of e's true role, performed the calculations.

A hundred thirteen years the hit and run goes on. There and not there—elusive e, escape artist and trickster, weaves in and out of minds and computations:Saint-Vincent caught a glimpse of it under rectangular hyperbolas;Huygens mistook its rising trace for logarithmic curve;Nicolaus Mercator described its log as natural without accounting for its base;Jacob Bernoulli, compounding interest continuously, came close, yet failed to recognize its face; and Leibniz grasped it hiding in the maze of calculus, natural basis for comprehending change—but misidentified as b.

The name was first recorded in a letterEuler sent Goldbach in November 1731:"e denontat hic numerum, cujus logarithmus hyperbolicus est=1." Since a was taken, and Euler was partial to vowels, e rushed to make a claim—the next in line.

We sometimes call eEuler's Number: he knewe in its infancy as 2.718281828459045235.

On Wednesday, 6th of May, 2009,e revealed itself to Kondo and Pagliarulo, digit by digit, to 200,000,000,000 decimal places. It found a new digital game to play.

Its reciprocal gave Bernoulli many trials, from gambling at the slot machines to deranged parties where nameless gentlemen check hats with butlers at the door, and when they leave, e's reciprocal hands each a stranger's hat.